Higher Education Webcasts

The World View

The power of large-scale international comparative research in higher education is increasing. Methodologically sophisticated surveys increasingly cover those territories of higher education about which, from international comparative perspectives, we used to have mostly guesses. Now we have hard data that can be used for research and policy purposes.

The power of large-scale international comparative research in higher education is increasing. Methodologically sophisticated surveys increasingly cover those territories of higher education about which, from international comparative perspectives, we used to have mostly guesses. Now we have hard data that can be used for research and policy purposes.

The power of large-scale international comparative research in higher education is increasing. Methodologically sophisticated surveys increasingly cover those territories of higher education about which, from international comparative perspectives, we used to have mostly guesses. Now we have hard data that can be used for research and policy purposes.

Institutions around the world are pursuing recognition as “world class” universities. In many cases, establishing world-class universities has been incorporated into national development strategies. This week’s blog is part of an ongoing series addressing these initiatives and the errors and oversights often committed in the course of implementation.

A few weeks ago I attended the First International World Views Conference on Media and Higher Education in Toronto. A major theme of this innovative conference (to which I contributed on a panel focusing on the developing world) was “How media coverage of higher education has changed over the past two decades and where it is headed.” My thesis –more below—is that the English language media dominating the news about global higher education is biased in favor of an Anglo/American perspective.

A conference in Toronto last month focused on higher education and the media. Organized by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and other groups, the event considered how information about higher education is communicated—we don’t often think about how higher education is portrayed to the public and to policymakers, or for that matter even how the academic community learns about what is going on in the ever more complex world of higher education.

In "What do the Egyptian student elections mean," part 1, we established the revolutionary break that the student elections of March and April 2011 represented for Egypt. The elections, taking place in every faculty of every public university, were open and fiercely contested.

A hot new topic for gossip in British university common rooms emerged over the weekend of 4/5 June with news of the launch of the “New College of the Humanities” (www.nchum.org), to be located in Bloomsbury, the home of many of the institutions that comprise the University of London.

I was one of those who had been closely watching the global reaction to the establishment of the “Obiang Chair” that would provide cash to UNESCO and name a science prize after President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the president of Equatorial Guinea for the past 30 years.